


she wants to know

by spycaptain



Category: Naruto
Genre: And unconditional love of the non-romantic variety, Except i hate sonnets, I could write a fucking sonnet on their friendship, Things that keep me writing: best friends in war time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 08:18:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4821899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spycaptain/pseuds/spycaptain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boy she knew is wearing his badge of murder, his pockets full of tools and toys to help him in his trade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she wants to know

**Author's Note:**

> studying Anko's return, and the brief time in Iruka's life when he tries to be something other than an academy teacher. also known as: why you don't tell sam your headcanons for characters you like, because they eat at her brain until she finally writes them down. (formerly, "the scum of it," but the lyrics didn't work so i fixed that shit.)

“Be good,” her mother says.

 

“But not too good,” her father adds.

 

Anko ignores them. She’s not only good, but she’s what they feared she would be: she’s quick and ruthless and creative, a combination that gets her in and out of trouble with little effort.

 

“Don’t be special,” they warn her.

 

Special gets her noticed, special almost gets her killed, special gets her a three year stint with a megalomaniac snake charmer with an uncomfortable obsession with children and eternal youth.

 

Special ruins Anko’s life.

 

“Don’t be something you’ll hate when you wake up in the morning,” her mother says to her the night before she leaves, as she packs a small bag for her youngest daughter.

 

The day Anko wakes up and doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror is the day she leaves Orochimaru. There’s a heaviness in her steps that comes with years of misbegotten deeds. Her lungs burn and her legs ache with every step, but she keeps going, only stopping to eat and occasionally sleep.

 

Her teacher is a missing-nin, and she knows what going home will mean: interrogations, sterile rooms, and a personal visit by a member of the Yamanaka clan.

 

She makes it to Konohagakure in under three days.

 

She doesn’t recognize the two shinobi at the front gate. She stumbles and nearly falls, only to have an ANBU guard grab her by the arm before she hits the earth.

 

* * *

 

  
  


The one thing that Anko needed to be the same when she returned to the village is different, and she hates it.

 

Iruka shifts casually, his steps light and loose and ready to land him somewhere else. When they turn the corner into a new part of the district, his eyes glance up from the earth and scan overhead - looking for exits, traps, anything that might be out to hurt them.

 

She knows what that means.

  
  


Somewhere in the years she was away, the civilian she left behind took the chance and became a soldier. Iruka took the chance and killed someone, and she was not there for it.

 

_ Not him _ , she thinks, and despairs.

 

“Do you want some?” he asks, offering her a si p of his lemonade, breaking her out of her reverie, and ending the strange silence between them.

 

She looks at his hands, sees the new scars that line his fingers, the criss-cross pattern that comes from hours and hours of rolling trap wire. She’s sure his arms have it too, and somewhere, maybe near his heart, there could be a scar left by someone who wanted to kill him.

 

“No,” she says, and swallows back her fears. “I don’t feel like being outside anymore.”

 

He blinks at her. “Are you okay? I said we didn’t have to go out for lunch, we could have just stayed at my place, I told you -”

 

She’s already turning around. 

 

“Okay then,” he sighs. “Whatever you want, Anko.”

 

* * *

 

  
  


She spends the first two weeks after being cleared by the Yamanaka interrogator alone in her apartment. She finds ways to keep herself busy - with her books, with her summons, with cleaning from her bedroom to the front door for the fourth time so many days.

 

She’s lonely, but not always alone, with Muerde in her apartment to distract her. The snake wraps itself around her shoulder and spends most of its time asleep, but sometimes it talks, or gives her affectionate nips on the shoulder.

 

Iruka throws open the door just when she starts getting used to the silence.

 

“We’re going training,” he says to her as he grabs her arm, pulling her up from her comfortable spot on the floor.

 

“I don’t want to train,” she says. “I don’t even think I’m allowed to train, Iruka.”

 

“I don’t care,” he tells her. “You’ve been in here too long, I thought maybe if I left you alone for a day or two you’d wander out on your own, but apparently that didn’t work so I’m dragging you out and  _ we are going to train _ .”

 

Anko follows him.   He’s wearing his chuunin vest. The boy she knew is wearing his badge of murder, his pockets full of tools and toys to help him in his trade. Iruka is a murderer, but she doesn’t know of who.

 

If she looks closely she can see a nearly-healed bruises that are scattered across both elbows, indicative of a harsh fall and an even harsher landing. There’s scabbing around one elbow, probably from landing on a rock, or a bush.

 

Where did you fall, she wonders, because those aren’t training bruises.

 

“What’d you have to promise to get them to allow me to do this?” she asks when they reach their destination.

 

“Taijutsu only,” he answers, but he’s smiling. “And no healing jutsu without another present, so try not to beat me up too much, okay?”

 

“I’ll do my best,” she laughs and begins stretching. It’s been months since she’s been allowed to do anything more than core exercises in her apartment. The promise of something more excites her, has her moving around with more energy than she expected from herself. 

 

She removes the shoes from her feet as he removes his, and waits patiently as Iruka goes to deposit his supply of weapons just outside of their training ring.

 

“Ready to get your ass kicked, Umino?” she asks.

 

He rolls his eyes at her, and takes a defensive stance. “Not a chance, Mitarashi.”

 

They start off slow, with a basic round of training moves to condition her, to remind her body of what it is supposed to do. Just when Anko thinks it’s starting to get boring, he switches tactics on her, trading his defensive movements for a series of offensive blows that have her stumbling backwards.

 

But Iruka favors his left side, and it only takes Anko allowing him a few solid hits for her to figure out why. He’s injured, and whatever happened left him with an unconscious need to not be hurt again.

 

It’s a dangerous mistake for a shinobi to make, so Anko exploits it. She fakes a punch to his left and switches right at the last moment, twisting Iruka’s arm behind him and forcing him to his knees.

 

“Why that spot, Iruka?” she asks, voice low.

 

“No idea what you’re talking about,” he says, and laughs. “This wasn’t supposed to be a real spar, if I knew you’d play dirty I wouldn’t have been so open.”

 

She presses her hand to his favored side, making him wince. “You’re lying to me.”

 

He doesn’t answer.

 

“Don’t fucking  _ lie _ to me, Iruka,” she snarls, pushing harder, causing him to gasp out, and then fall silent.

 

In the silence that stretches between them, Anko learns the sounds of Iruka's pain; the surprise that manifests in his sharp and small inhalations, his half-hollowed eyes as he searches for a place to ground himself, the tightness in his jaw as he discovers the unavoidable, and overcomes it.

 

She remembers that pain has never been the thing to break Iruka. She thinks it never will be.

 

“I don’t know what happened to you when you were gone,” he finally grinds out. “But this the only time I will allow you to treat me like this without retaliating. Let go of me, Anko.”

 

“Not until you tell me.”

 

Iruka shoves himself backwards, his left shoulder hitting her chin, and in the moment she loses her balance he pulls free. He settles a few steps away from her, furious.

 

“We’re done for today,” he sighs at her. “Go get yourself some help.”   
  


 

* * *

 

 

It’s another week before she gathers the courage to talk to him again. Iruka isn’t at his apartment when she finally drags herself there, so she lets herself in with the spare key he gave her.

 

She waits an hour, then two, then three, before she decides to go back to her apartment.

 

_ I’m sorry _ , she writes on a spare piece of paper in the kitchen, and leaves.

 

* * *

 

Anko finds him waiting for her outside the hospital a few days later.

 

“I got your note,” he says. “Is it too much for me to hope you were here because you were actually talking to someone?”

 

If she’s being honest, “Yes.”

 

 

He groans and grabs her hand, dragging her away from the building. “Whatever, you’re buying me ramen as an apology.”

 

“I don’t have any money?”

 

He gives her a look. “Then you’re going to owe me, aren’t you?”

 

She follows him, keeping a firm grip on his hand as she stares at the back of his head, where she can see three sutures barely hidden beneath his hair.

 

She smiles despite this, because it's Iruka, and he would never tell her what hurt him anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t like how quiet you are.” Iruka decides a few weeks later, during one of their usual lunch outings. “It’s fucking creepy.”

 

He has a rope burn on his right wrist, and she has the suspicion that his shoulder was recently dislocated.

 

“You said that a few days ago,” she sighs, stirring her ramen.

 

He makes a face at her, pointing his chopsticks in her direction. “That’s because you have been quiet and it’s creepy.”

 

“Would it make you feel better if I yelled and beat up someone?” Anko asks. She stabs the egg in her bowl a few times for emphasis.

 

Iruka smiles. “Yes, actually.”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Right, I’ll get on that, just as soon as they lift my probation and I’m actually allowed to do something other than eat and sleep and shit in this village.”

 

“Good.” he says.

 

She watches him fumble with the egg in his own bowl for a moment, and says nothing.

 

* * *

 

It takes a few months, but eventually she puts it all together; the odd cuts and the interesting bruises, the burns on the tips of his fingers, the way he tenses when she moves too close too fast and tries to laugh it off.

 

Iruka stumbles into his apartment, dead-eyed and covered in another man’s blood.

He doesn’t seem surprised to see her sitting there in his living room, wrapped in the blanket she stole from his bed, flipping through an old tome of seals she managed to get her hands on.

 

“I’ve got nothing,” she says, holding her hands up, turning them back and forth for him to see. “Just my summon, and she’s asleep.”

 

“Right,” he says, but doesn't take his eyes off of her.  “I’m going to go shower. Please don’t bother me.”

 

She watches him as he walks to the bathroom.

 

His chunin vest hangs on the door, laughing at her, laughing at all of her stupid, inane ideas, like the one where she assumed that without his vest the mission he was on had to be a safe one.

 

She doesn’t understand anything about the black armor he wears. It is standard issue for a rank far above what his chuunin vest suggests. It does not belong on him.

 

Forty minutes pass without a sound, with no running water from the bathroom, no creaks from motion on the floor. She stands up, sitting Muerde on the blanket, and walks to the bathroom door.

 

“Iruka?” she asks.

 

There’s a thud and a gasp of startled movement.

 

“I’m going to come in, okay?” she says, and slowly opens the door.

 

She finds him standing in front of the mirror, half undressed, arms hanging loosely at his side. His chest, dark and yellow with bruises, is heaving, rising and falling to an uneven rhythm.

He's panicking.

 

She can see the dark spots of newly formed bruises across his neck, see the space where the amateur who tried to kill him slipped and broke their grip, letting Iruka escape.

 

She wants to scream.

 

“I think I need to look at your neck," she says instead, letting her terror leave her in one rushed breath.

 

He doesn’t say anything, just watches her from the reflection in the mirror.

  
  


“Is that okay, Iruka?” she asks.  “I want to check your neck, but I want your permission.”

 

She holds up her hands, repeating the motion from earlier in the living room. Look, they say, no threat here. Just Anko, and just Anko’s hands.

 

He nods.

 

“Thank you,” she smiles and hopes it's comforting, because she feels like crying.

 

Because as she looks at his neck and whispers reassurances to him, she imagines what he saw: the edges of his vision going dark and blurred, the face of the shinobi who would kill him the last portrait of the world he'd leave behind.

 

There's no hint of love or life with another person's hands around your neck.

 

“Nothing hurts?” she asks.

 

He closes his eyes. “Nothing hurts more than usual.”

 

“That’s good, I guess,” she says, lifting his chin up and pressing her fingers against his neck, around the bruises, palpating and feeling for hidden injury.

 

Anko steps beside him and places a hand on his shoulder, gently turning him away from the mirror and towards her. He says nothing, keeping his head turned to the mirror, watching her care for him through their reflections.

 

If it’s easier to watch a death by realizing it’s not your own, she thinks, maybe it’s easier to watch surviving that way too.

 

“No other injuries?”

 

He opens his eyes and looks down at her. She can feel him trembling, a slight motion to match his uneven breathing. “Just bruising.”

 

She pulls her hands back from his neck, flat and open in front of him. Still Anko’s hands.  “Are they dead?”

 

“Yeah,” he sighs, almost laughs, sounding a bit hysterical. “They’re dead. I killed them.”

 

“Good.” she says, and then: “You look like shit, Iruka.”

 

He turns away from the mirror, looking at her for the first time since she entered the room.

 

“I kind of do, don’t I?” he asks, almost embarrassed, or maybe finally flush with the realization he’s alive - that he survived. “I look like I got the shit kicked out of me.”

 

she raises an eyebrow. “Well you did, didn’t you?”

 

He nods, wincing, and she takes the pause in their conversation as her cue to leave him be.

 

“Right, take your shower, unless…” she leers at him. “You want help, Umino? I know plenty of boys and girls who would pay for this kind of experience.”

 

A flush spreads across his cheeks and he sputters, pushing her away. “N-no! What the hell, Anko! Get out!”

 

She cackles as he shoves her out the door.

 

“I’m going to check up on you if you aren’t out of there in a half hour,” she says, crossing her arms as he peeks out the half open bathroom door.

 

Iruka glares. “Don’t be a pervert, Anko.”

 

“Because that's obviously what I'm doing." She rolls her eyes, and goes to the kitchen.

 

When he comes out of the bathroom, showered and clean, exhausted and ready for bed, she has a cup of tea ready for him.

 

“You can’t tell me anything about this, can you?”  she asks him in the hallway, as she hands him the cup.

 

“No, I can’t.” he sighs. “Is caffeine supposed to help me sleep?”

 

“It’s a sleeping tea, you ass.”

 

He takes the cup from her hands, and turns his room. “Goodnight, Anko.”

 

She picks up Muerde, and the blanket, and curls up on the couch.

 

“Goodnight, Iruka.”

 

She wakes up later with a puff of hair in her face, and realizes after a minute of confused blinking that it is Iruka next to her; on the floor, by the couch.

 

She reaches out and scratches the top of his head, grumbling. “‘Morning.”

 

He tilts his head back. “I just got back from a mission report, do you want breakfast?”

 

“No,” she groans, and pulls herself up on the couch, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I want you to go back to bed or relax or something.”

 

“Or something?” he asks.

 

She picks Muerde up from a rather uncomfortable spot between her legs and lightly deposits the snake in Iruka’s lap.

 

“Something, anything, whatever.” Anko says. “As long as it doesn’t involve you coming back like you did last night.”

 

He frowns at her. “I had to mention you in my report, you know.”

 

“Ugh,” she sighs. “Fuck.”

 

“It’s probably fine,” he shrugs, carefully picking up the disgruntled snake summon and plopping it back next to Anko, who makes a face.

 

She throws the blanket over his head, Muerde in it, and rolls off of the couch, landing on top of Iruka in a mess of limbs.

 

“I’m going to kill you,” he decides, rolling her off of him.

 

She rolls back. “Try it, Umino.”

 

He holds the blanket up above his head, over the two of them, a little makeshift canopy for their conversation. “I could, you know.”

 

She thinks about it for a minute. “Maybe, but probably not yet. I’m Sannin trained. You got a few years before you can take on The Mitarashi.”

 

“ _ The Mitarashi _ .” he groans, and kicks at Anko, forcing her to untangles herself from the mess of limbs she created.

 

She scoots beside Iruka, curling up under his arm, just like she used to when they were younger.

 

“You’re making me affectionate,” she whines. “This is what you’ve done by coming back last night looking like that. Now I worry, Iruka.”

 

He drops his arm to rest around her shoulder and pulls her in closer.

 

“And you’re going to keep worrying.” he says. “Because this is my choice, and I want to keep doing this. And you’re my  _ best friend _ , and as my best friend you’re going to understand, right?”

 

“Yeah,” she sighs, holding her hand out for Muerde to wrap itself around. “But I’m never going to like it.”

 

He shrugs, and Anko realizes that he is still very much the boy with bad ideas from their childhood. But now he’s also a man who will stick by them, which somehow makes it all worse.

 

“My choice, Anko,”  he says, as if he knows what she is thinking.

 

“Yeah, Iruka, I get it,” she sighs. “The blood, the bruises, all of it. Trust me when I say I understand stupid choices.”

 


End file.
